


Unafraid

by ariadnes_string



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag for 5.02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean looks back on the year gone by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unafraid

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[5.02](http://ariadnes-string.livejournal.com/tag/5.02), [fanfic](http://ariadnes-string.livejournal.com/tag/fanfic), [s5](http://ariadnes-string.livejournal.com/tag/s5), [spn](http://ariadnes-string.livejournal.com/tag/spn)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **Fic: Unafraid (spoilers for 5.02)** _

Title: Unafraid  
Rating: PG  
Warnings: Spoilers for everything through 5.02 (nothing beyond that, though)  
Word Count: ~1,200  
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.  
Summary: Dean looks back on the year gone by.

A/N: I had so many things I had to get done this week that I wrote this instead. It may be more meta than fic. I apologize for adding to the coda-glut, especially since I think this is probably a minority opinion.  
A/N: Unbeta'd. And there's not much grammar inside Dean's head.  
A/N: There was a lot going on in the episode. This is just me trying to figure out one part of it.

**Unafraid**

Dean swung himself into the Impala, put the key into the ignition, and automatically looked to his right.

The empty space shocked right through him, stole his air.

He had to wrestle in a few ragged breaths, holding onto the steering wheel white-knuckled, before he could force himself to turn the key.

He knew he should get as far away from River Pass as possible, but he only managed to get down out of the mountains to somewhere just east of Pueblo before he had to stop. He felt weird—hollow and shaky, like he'd been stuck in bed for a long time, or had just finished an epic bout of sobbing. Which was strange, because he'd been upright and dry-eyed the whole time.

He checked himself into a non-descript motel, shucked his clothes, and got in the shower. Figured the spray would dissolve whatever was holding him together, and he'd cry for real, or throw up, or maybe do some yelling.

But he didn't. When he got out of the shower, he just felt clean.

He dug around for some almost-fresh clothes, and tried to ignore how naked he felt even after he was dressed.

Still kind of hollow too. So light he might float away. He ordered a pizza, ate most of it, and after that he felt better anchored.

He sat on the bed staring at the blank screen of the TV. Couldn't bear to turn it on, couldn't face any new reports of apocalyptic disaster.

Even in the silence, though, even clean and full, he still felt weird. After a while, he realized what it was.

He wasn't afraid.

Well, okay, he wasn't saying he was completely without fear. He was still scared shitless of the apocalypse, and rightfully so, judging by the wholesale destruction of the past few days. And he was still pretty fucking _disturbed_ that some archangel had decided that he was the perfect meatsuit to slip into like—well, the less said about that the better.

He just wasn't scared about Sam.

His heart rate sped up a bit once he'd flushed that fact into the open. But now that it was out there, he couldn't let it go. Dean stood and emptied the weapons onto the motel table, checking through them so as to have something to do with his hands while he dismantled the sources of that strange release like an unfamiliar gun.

It wasn't like him to pick apart a feeling so meticulously, he knew--but, hey, who was acting like themselves these days?

He'd been afraid _for_ Sam all his conscious life. Since the night Dad had thrust a surprisingly heavy bundle of limbs into his arms, worrying about whether his brother was alright had been the background noise of every other mental state he'd ever experienced. It still was. Even now, after everything, some small corner of his consciousness was worrying over Sam's well-being like a dog with its favorite chew toy.

And yeah, he'd admit it now, there'd been a couple of times over the past year when he'd been afraid _of_ Sam, his brother spiraling out into such a demon-blood-fueled rage that there hardly seemed to be anything of _Sam_ left in him.

But the thing that was gone—this fear he was only able to understand now that had lifted—was something else.

He thought that maybe what he'd been spooked by wasn't Sam, but something unfamiliar in himself. That all last year he'd been on the brink of knowing that the ties that bound him to his brother were loosening, that he was looking over the rim into a future where he didn't always put Sam first, where he might make choices in which keeping Sam safe wasn't the first priority.

And that had terrified him, he realized. Freaked him out so much that every time he'd come close to acknowledging it he'd plunged deep into some different state of mind to block it out. Into fury--_at_ Sam usually, for becoming a person whom Dean couldn't automatically put first. Into booze, or apathy, or exhaustion.

Because opening himself to the possibility that he could live without Sam had felt like falling over a precipice, limbs flailing in empty air. Had felt like hurling himself unarmed into a dark room filled with monsters. Had felt like dying.

Because to leave Sam would be to kill off the Dean he'd known all his life, had gotten used to, for better or worse, a person who had everything bound up in his brother.

And because leaving Sam would mean walking away from his father too, betraying him in death as he never had in life, breaking the first and deepest promises he'd made: to keep Sam safe from the world, and later, to keep the world safe from Sam.

And because, after all, the last time the option of living without Sam had presented itself, he'd literally chosen death.

Of course, he'd gotten along without Sam before. But when Sam went Stanford, Dean had known that Sam needed to leave, and he'd tried to accept that, even if he hadn't always done it with the best of grace. There had been no part of Dean that had wanted him to go.

This time, there was. And it was that part of him—the part that wished the brother he'd died for would just step away—that made Dean feel like a monster, made the fury and thirst swell up within him.

So he'd pulled back from the brink every time. Dean remembered the _thunk_ of his packed bag on the floor when they'd gotten the call about the Rugaru, remembered the muffled thud of his duffle on the motel chair when he realized he couldn't leave Sam to fight Lilith alone, remembered lying in puddle of broken glass trying on Dad's line for size.

And so he'd spent last year in a low-grade panic—not just about accepting the guilt for what he'd done in Hell, not just about the implications of being sprung by angel, and not just about Sam's duplicity and his addiction. He'd been waiting, tense and poised, to shatter, for the cracking, obliterative noise of the other shoe dropping. The sound of one of them leaving.

But now he realized that during that time he'd forgotten, maybe they'd both forgotten, something else their father had taught them—something that had gotten them through every hunt they'd ever been on. Something that had let them plunge into that mob of possessed townspeople the last time they were in Colorado, and that had pushed him through that door in the convent only a few weeks ago. That the fear of what might happen is always worse that what actually happens—if only because being on the other side means you don't have to be scared of what's coming any more.

Dean started putting the weapons away, satisfied with their general readiness. They'd done it: he and Sam had faced each other across that picnic table and they'd pushed through to the other side of something. They'd hurt each other, sure, there at the end, but maybe they'd helped each other too. Done something together. The shoe had dropped, and they were both still alive—for the time being anyway. And that was saying a lot, for them.

He wasn't dead, though he might not be the person he'd been before. And he wasn't afraid.


End file.
